How To Sell Your Fitness Program Using A Proven Facebook Ad Framework

INTRODUCTION

The next 5 minutes will give you an actionable step by step process that has been proven to massively improve the ROAS (return on ad spend) for fitness education businesses.

DISCLAIMER

We are not guaranteeing that the following framework will result in any sales or that your ads will get approved by Facebook. It’s important to do your own research and become familiar with Facebook’s Ad Policies before attempting to invest any money into the platform. The fitness industry can be a tricky one as Facebook frowns upon any guarantees of results, befores/afters and specific mentions to the human body.

BRAND MESSAGING

One of the most immediate issues we find when we look into the Facebook Ads Manager of potential clients is that the brand messaging is completely off.

What I mean here is that your followers are used to a very specific style of ‘messaging’. When you speak to your followers, regardless of the platform, they grow attached to the style you use – whether that’s subconsciously or consciously.

For example, if you promote a “Booty Building Course” and call your followers “Booty Babes”… that’s exactly the type of messaging you NEED to include on every platform you’re on, not just a few selective ones. (Assuming all platforms will approve of this messaging)

People tend to feel advertisements need to be overly professional, especially fitness pros who don’t have too much experience writing ads. Listen, I get it… the way you speak with your Grandmother and the way you speak with your Best Friend are most likely dramatically different.

What I’m telling you is to completely drop that psychology when writing copy (ad text) for your business. If you change things up, you’ll throw out very subtle signals that add trust and heavily miss out on converting more people by using that catchy messaging theme you use on your other platforms. When in doubt; write authentically and naturally. Whichever platform you built the bulk of your audience on will absolutely have a messaging theme even if you haven’t realized it… it will go a long way to research and take notes of your own brand messaging.

Not only will this be great for your own use, it also helps build processes so that when you onboard employees, hire a landing page copywriter, outsource to an agency, etc. you’ll be able to hand over a brand messaging ‘palette’ that they can easily reference to make sure things are on the right path. This will save you time and make you more money in the long term.

COPY FRAMEWORK

Now it’s time to dive into different ways you can structure your ad copy (i.e. Facebook Ads) that will drive more engagement and convert more sales.

Keep in mind that while we’re going to give you a ‘framework’ you can follow, it’s not a “win-all”, we’re not guaranteeing you that this will provide a positive ROAS. All we’re saying is simply – this has been shown to work for us across many accounts in the fitness niche.

Structuring your framework is heavily dependant on the audience you’re marketing to so while explaining the copy, we’re also going into the basics of a funnel:

Top Of Funnel = Cold Audience

By ‘cold audience’ what we mean is that these are people that have never heard of your brand before. This is the VERY FIRST exposure they are going to have with your brand. Inside Facebook Ads Manager, this typically is used with the Campaign Objectives ‘Video Views’, ‘Pay Per Engagement’, ‘Reach’ and ‘Brand Awareness’.

Almost everything in the top of your funnel should be focused on bringing value without asking for anything in return.

This is the place where you GIVE, GIVE AND GIVE. Consider this your Instagram Feed (but without pitching in the description)… the main purpose here is to intrigue the user, to build familiarity even if it’s simply subconscious “I’ve seen that before”.

This will help pre-frame people for trusting you when you make your first offers. One example of this as a fitness professional is to post workout videos without asking for anything in return. Build your copy entirely based on using your brand messaging to capture the users attention (stop the scroll) and a snippet for spiking engagement, like this:

Obviously, there’s a hundred thousand different ways you can approach this. The top of funnel is the simplest part, we just feel it’s important to reiterate that it’s not the time to be making stiff offers to your users. They need to be warmed up. Consider your Facebook Ad funnel like a date… you’re not going to go in for the kiss right away, right? Well, hopefully not… Before getting intimate (in this case, getting a sale) you’ve got to build LKT: Like, Know, Trust.

Notice that we started the copy with “WORKOUT”, this is similar to starting the copy with “BLOG POST”, as it easily catches the users attention and they instantly know it’s content, not a sales pitch.

P.s. Yes, we know the banana photo makes absolutely zero sense or holds no relativity to the copy – all we want you to do here is focus on the copy.

Middle Of Funnel = Warm Audience

As you can guess from here, a warm audience is in the middle of your funnel and is designed to build brand trust and present low level offers. Inside Facebook Ads Manager, this typically is used with the Campaign Objectives ‘Traffic’, ‘Lead Generation’ and ‘Messages’.

This might be where you first offer a free trial, free PDF download in exchange for their email, etc. However, this is not the place to pull out an engagement ring… this is where you ask them for coffee or dinner.

These are commonly called “trip wires” or “lead magnets”… here’s a few examples in the fitness niche:

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The idea is simple – you’re taking a user who is familiar with your brand (i.e. has recently engaged with your page, watched a video, visited your website, etc.) and bringing them one step further towards being comfortable purchasing from you.

Marketing psychology (and data) tells us that the more individual engagement points people have with your brand, the more likely they are to convert. By taking them down through your funnel step by step giving value and then making a “small ask” before you ask for the big thing like purchasing your course, you’ll dramatically lower your cost per sale and most importantly increase your ROAS.

Here’s an example of tripwire copy:

A few things to notice here…

We kept the brand messaging theme consistent

We solved any objections or concerns about the price while avoiding the use of the word “FREE” as Facebook tends to frown on that style of terminology and it debatably devalues your offer

Added a little humor into the copy and creative to keep it light and natural without pushing any boundaries on Facebook’s Ad Policies

Inserted a clear, concise call to action that tells them what they need to do and sets the expectation that they will need to provide an email

Bottom Of Funnel = Hot Audience

And finally, in the bottom of your funnel lies the “hot audience”. This audience is filled with both people who have converted from your lower level offers and your superfans that have purchased products in the past. It’s where most of your ‘retargeting’ will take place.

You know when you’re looking at a product online and you add the product to the ‘cart’ and then 5 minutes later you get an ad on Facebook like “Hey, did you forget something? Return to your cart and use this 10% off coupon!” Well, that’s considered a bottom of funnel ad in Facebook lingo.

This is where it’s most effective to make those high-end/high-dollar offers.

I.e. They’ve expressed interest by viewing the content on a specific product page or even added that product to the cart as mentioned above in an example – this information is vital because it allows you to segment your ad sets (audiences) and show only the most relative offers.

If you’ve got 4, 8 and 12 week programs and someone adds the 8 week program to the cart but doesn’t purchase, they have essentially told you which product they are interested in. With this information you should only show them an offer for the exact product they expressed interest for.

Also, if you want to go deeper into the targeting you can consider a flow like:

Show a full price offer to people that added to cart in the last 3 days

Show a discounted offer to people that added to cart 3-7 days ago

Show a large discount, plus a bonus to people that added to cart 7-14 days ago

The ideology here is that if someone very recently expressed a strong interest (like adding your product to the cart) they are very likely to buy, so save yourself the 20% (or whatever your discount is) by first offering it full price first because they very well might purchase it at that price. Then you can layer down, sweetening the offer as time goes on, testing different approaches to entice them into buying.

Note: be sure to exclude a custom audience of people that purchased, otherwise you’ll be wasting money.

Here’s an example of the copy framework for a bottom of funnel ad:

Essentially, the framework is like:

Problem Question

Answer the Problem Questions

Origin Story

Make the Offer

Bullet Point Benefit List

Call To Action

As we’ve said, this isn’t a “rule all framework”, it’s important that with every single offer you present you test various sets of copy and creative.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

If you have one takeaway from this article please make it this: Build your ad sets based on specific actions people have (or haven’t) taken and write your ad copy towards that individual person. The data will help you understand what level they are at and the likelihood they will actually purchase.

Additionally, focus on how it will change their circumstances and you’ll convert more people and change more lives.

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